Reviews

The Monster in the Hall

Michael Coveney
London's West End

David Greig’s delightful fairy tale uses just four actors, four microphones and a host of sound effects, but takes us from the mean streets of Kirkcaldy to the mythical world of computer-animated cinema and motorbike racing.

There’s a quality of Greig’s Midsummer in the charm and momentum of the narrative, which centres on a 16 year-old girl making sense of her life in her secret writing. Duck’s imaginative encounters colour her real-life ones with her sick father, gauche boyfriend and the dreaded social worker who drops pamphlets like fairy dust.

But life can go from grey to parti-coloured if you embrace the adventure, and Gemma McElhinney’s glorious performance transforms her grim prospects into golden opportunity.

Well, a creative writing course in Dunfermline, at least. Greig is too fierce and brilliant a writer to allow the potential banality of his own ideas to gain the upper hand.

With director Guy Hollands – the show was first mounted by the schools and touring wing of the Glasgow Citizens in 2009 – he’s pulled off a jewel of a “young people’s” fable.

And McElhinney is superbly supported by Keith Macpherson as her bike-bonkers dad, David Carlyle as her Sir Lancelot and Beth Marshall doubling as the social worker and a heavy metal Valkyrie from Trondheim.